


Storm, Sea, Thunder, and Lightning

by liquorcanini



Category: Karanduun (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Father noooo, Other, i love u has huhu, mother... noooooo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:08:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27365551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquorcanini/pseuds/liquorcanini
Summary: Lost folklore about a man and a woman who met at a deserted island.
Kudos: 2





	Storm, Sea, Thunder, and Lightning

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to no song, but feel free to listen to some sad senti shit

As with all stories, ours begins with a storm.

A storm that had tossed to and fro a quaint and humble little fishing vessel. Within housed three men: a large and brooding man that had lived all his life upon the sea, and two of his friends and dear helpers.

When the storm cursed his fishing vessel to be dashed upon the rocks, he was the only one left alive. He floated, half-dead, upon the churning sea until he washed up against the sandy white beaches of an isolated and abandoned island.

Without his nearby friends, the man immediately took to what he did best: survive. He gathered coconuts, cooked fish and crabs, created a spear out of a bamboo shaft with a fire-hardened tip. Then, when he realized he would need more food while waiting for rescue vessels or at least some other kind of fishing vessel, he delved deeper into the jungle green of the island.

There he found a young maiden, entrancing in her beauty. She was clad in only the wafting mist that arose from the rushing churning of the waterfalls as she bathed. He couldn’t stop himself from taking a closer look, and when he did, he realized that she was sitting by a large boulder, drying her hair and singing a wonderful and beautiful song thatr he did not know the words to.

“Oh, great maiden,” he said. “Lend me your ear!”

The maiden jumped when he first spoke, but when she looked down and saw the man, she furrowed her eyebrows. “Who are you, and why have you come to my island?”

“Your island? My apologies, binibini, I did not know pieces of nature can be claimed by people, even they of a beauty that matches the diwata such as yourself.”

“Spare me the charming words, non-charmer,” said the diwata, and she began singing again. When he stayed, she asked: “Why haven’t you left?”

“When one sees a flower so beautiful one is obliged to pluck it.”

“And if you cannot?”

“Then I simply must stare at it long enough for its countenance to be imprinted upon my soul.”

They had that same back and forth everyday, day by day, each day that no fishing vessel passed by, or a fishing vessel couldn’t see him. Due to his persistence, the woman by the waterfull eventually grew a liking to the man’s irresistbly stupid charms. Eventually, after perhaps the fourteenth day of non-stop courting--

“Why do you keep coming back?” she would say and he would answer with something poetic at first like “If one sees a blooming jade vine one is obliged to watch over it day by day until it’s visage passes from the world,” and then he would follow it up with “besides, it’s not like I can go anywhere else”.

\--she finally accepted his love, which truly did seem to be undying, as it was neverending and it never missed a day.

“Binibini,” the man would ask, once. “Pray tell me your name.”

“Sobina.”

Eventually, when he found that there were larger trees grown in the middle of the forest he, along with the woman’s help managed to create a baroto to ride upon. He enticed her to come back to his town with her, that they may spend all their remaining days together, happy in the emanation of each other’s love.

She nodded, eagerly. It wasn’t like anything tied her down to the island. It was a simple place that she simply liked to stay at.

The man did notice how eager she was to get off the island, but he just chocked it up to the love that she had begun to foster in her heart, leading her to plunge into the unknown with the one she loved the most.

And so, they traveled back to his town. To the city of Tubigan, in the midst of civilization. 

He promised to take care of her and made money as a persisten fisherman, making enough to support their everyday needs. Eventually, their love gave fruit to a single child, the culmination of their togetherness. A young boy, whom they had given the name of “Aghas Nam”. 

When she gave birth, the man noticed something strange about Aghas: his skin was covered in scintilatting, multicolored scales, and his ears were webbed, as if he had been birthed from the womb of a siyokoy.

This greatly troubled him, but the man did not bring it up with his wife, as he was scheduled to go on a fishing expedition on the day of their son’s birth. There he promised that whatever will happen, he will return to them, safe and sound, and that Aghas Nam will have a father. Aghas Nam will have a father.

And so he did. He left. And before long he came back, after a few months of travel. Aghas was still a babe suckling upon his mother’s teat when he came back, and the man was relieved to have kept his promise.

And then he remembered that Aghas had webbed ears and scales.

The man began to wonder, then. Maybe this was connected to the fact that she was stranded on that island, or the reason why she avoided bathing with him despite the two of them being truly in love, or why she always avoided the rain. She always avoided the water that came from the sky. She always avoided the water that did not come from the waters of her island and the sea.

So one day, he decided to find out.

A thunderstorm raged. The roof of their house leaked. Before long, water seeped in. When the man managed to make the water dapple and soak his wife, his answers were unearthed and uncovered. In the midst of the pool of rainwater, he saw his precious Sobina, turned into a woman wrapped in scales, eyes that of a fish, teeth serrated. Completely inhuman.

“Sobina,” the man said.

“Look at me not! Avert your eyes! I am hideousness given form! Putridness given flesh.” And she ran. She ran and leapt into the sea, never to be found again.

The man stood there, at the shore of the sea, wishing to see his beloved again, for indeed he loved not the skin but the spirit. But he waited and he waited, and through the years his son grew up to become a healthy and skilled man, one who was not afraid to show who he loved, much like his father.

But Sobina never returned.


End file.
